Meaning of tumble on | Babel Free

Definitions

To accidentally encounter (a person or situation).

idiomatic, transitive

Examples

““I’m luck to have fallen upon you, Kemp. You must help me. Fancy tumbling on you just now! I’m in a devilish scrape […]””

““He murdered the man all right. I tumbled on the truth by the merest accident, when I’d pretty nearly chucked the whole job.””

“1931, E. Phillips Oppenheim, “What Sir Stephen Forgot” in Sinners Beware, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1932, p. 158, (first published as “In the Strongroom” in Collier’s Weekly, 11 April, 1931), “If it isn’t Peter Hames?” he cried. “God bless my soul! They told us over in New York that you were living in these parts, but to tumble on you like this! Why, we only landed here two minutes ago. I call this fine.””

CEFR level